Before Willoughby
by rusalkagirl
Summary: "Bass repositioned Charlie so that she was hugging his neck, and her head slept on his shoulder as they journeyed. That was all she was doing, he assured himself – sleeping. But he kept her lips close to his ear, just in case the small wisps of air seeping from between them were to stop." Takes place between their scenes in episode 2x04, and may include spoilers.


She suspended like dead weight in his arms, heat rising from her skin because of the alcohol. After making his weapons comfortable in their niches, Bass repositioned Charlie so that she was hugging his neck, and her head slept on his shoulder as they journeyed. That was all she was doing, he assured himself – sleeping. But he kept her lips close to his ear, just in case the small wisps of air seeping from between them were to stop.

A storm was imminent; the wind had picked up, and a fresh dampness saturated his hair. He hoped to shield Charlie's face from the rain, sticking his neck out farther as an improvised shelter. Pneumonia was not something he knew how to treat, nor would it be what he'd lose her to. Salt burned his eyes, though – already bloodshot from the buzz of killing. They strained in the search of somewhere to rest. His knees buckled, the weight of sodden clothes and an unconscious girl tapping into a strength, almost an animal instinct, he did not realize he possessed. Raucous growls grated his throat as he trekked on despite it, in the faith that a structure, no matter how gritty, must exist somewhere nearby.

He was right. At first, he wondered whether he was hallucinating, or if it was a mere blotch of something on the film of his eye. As he grew closer, however, a wooden pavilion materialized on the outermost edge of a stream. Hardly sturdy, probably rotted, but it was something.

Bass heaved upon settling in asylum, noticed for the first time how his chest was ferreting for breath. His sigh of relief escaped as more of a gag.

They were in the heart of a clearing. Merciful trees strung through the decayed planks and high grass typical of a coppice encircled them, a decent enough environment. If enemies were nearby, Bass would hear before they had a visual on him and Charlie, although he was not positive what he would do with her during combat. Just as he has always done – be ruthless and get lucky, he thought self-deprecatingly.

Tenderly, he laid Charlie on a bed of leaves as deep in cover as possible. For a moment, he considered using his weathered shirt as a pillow for her, then figured she probably wake up disgusted by it. Instead, he cherry-picked the softest greenery around and longed for the best. Goosebumps perforated her limbs, toured up to her neck; after pressing a wet kiss to her forehead, his next task was to create a bonfire. He constructed it rather quickly, and periodically checked Charlie's skin for any hint of warming bones. Once or twice, he made sure to find her pulse – just in case.

The hours past, his eyelids weighed down in a plea for slumber. He reminded himself that he could not betray Charlie now. If the constant flow of thunder and lightning could not wake her, she would have no chance at reacting come any trouble. Bass stayed awake, inspecting for signs of life or death, fingers wound protectively around his blade.

Beads of perspiration had formed on Charlie's brow – a good sign. The drugs were escaping however they could. He prepared a canteen for her, believing that she would flutter awake again soon.

Eventually, she did. Mouth twitching upward, muscles tightening, and a jerking realization of her whereabouts. Charlie scrambled to her feet, but skated down in the process, mud slick beneath their encampment. He told her to calm down, and passed his trusty flask – the only thing to never let him down. It hushed her momentarily, upon acknowledging how weak she continued to feel on rising. Head too heavy for her shoulders, she was woozy as an infant. To avoid further embarrassment, Bass pretended not to notice how her body quivered, nor the presence of moss in her curls.

She asked the natural questions: how long was she out, why he had followed her in the first place, etcetera. None of his calm responses seemed adequate for her fury. She was practically dancing to harm him somehow – first with her words, then with fists or knives. Offended, Bass had to retell himself that he had expected no less from her, or any other Matheson. He deserved to be called callous, even mentally ill, and he _knew_ he was good at killing.

What hurt the most, as if he was warranted to talk about his pain, was the look of disappointment and repulsion in Charlie any time he was around.

Once she had steadied herself and downed a bit of nourishment, Bass directed Charlie to the stream to the east of their site. She mentioned that she wanted to bathe, which was a wonderful idea, in his opinion; she had collected the aroma of liquor, sweat, dirt, chemicals, and him. Her face had befallen a greenish color, as if she wanted to vomit, the more she awoke.

At first, she objected to him staying close by – out of sight, but not earshot. But she forfeited the battle of what was best for her when he mentioned the situation she had stubbornly marched into earlier. Of course, she had not been expecting to be drugged, that was not her fault; it just would never have happened if she had aided in finding Miles beforehand. So, Bass could not leave her unsupervised immediately after waking. There was too much of a risk that she would be attacked again, or might go where he could not protect her.

While she washed, he thought about many things.

He thought about homicide, the first person he ever killed. It was with Miles, overseas, fighting for what once was the United States of America – now the Divided States of Nothing. The Plains Nation, Georgia Federation, even the Monroe Republic, none of it mattered. Bass had killed them all, in cold blood, corpses for the birds to peck and empty. Dozens more were dead as a result of him, some chain of command or another. He flipped through invented images of their final hours in his mind: kidnap, torture, beseeching, branding, fear, watching relatives be ripped limb by limb. To say that the Mathesons were a large portion of that…well, he pulverized grass with the toe of his boot just thinking it.

He thought about his pilgrimage, the boundless pit he collapsed into after his sisters died, and how he only could climb out after their murderer was dead, too. If Charlie was on that journey now, necessitating justice for Danny, she had reached the final stop. His killer was right here.

And being a sociopath – a concept he never considered. It was a miracle that he had fooled everyone into believing he was detached, emotionless, able to act without deliberation or guilt, had skin of granite. For every time he put a gun to someone else's head, he had done the same to himself three more times. He practiced with himself, always have, but Miles was always there to separate his finger from the trigger.

Miles wasn't there now. The Matheson he was with would have liked for his guts to decorate the forest floor.

Something snapped in him, like a rubber band pinning his heart to his chest. He felt physical pain, and he throbbed, and he knew that things had gotten out of control, and everyone had cause to blame him, and everyone had abandoned him because they knew he could slaughter anyone, including those he loved. And he was sorry, but there was nobody left to apologize to because he ended their lives at any minor inclination of disloyalty. Bass had wanted to be loved, and he never could do it right. Everyone wanted to leave him, and he could only let someone go if they were dead and buried.

He cradled his head in his hands, fingernails dragging spheres into his temples. Meanwhile, Charlie made small noises of contentment in the stream, excited to be clean. He was so tired, and he had to keep her composed, and he had to protect her, and it still would not matter because he deserved no trust, no love.

His knees began to stutter, and his eyes watered. He cried more than any respective ruler would, anyway; Miles had brought that to his attention. He was too emotional to lead an army, and too unhinged to be president, and still everyone believed he cared about nothing.

Charlie emerged from the flora, smelling more female – a girl who rolls in meadows and invites her boyfriend to waterfalls for sex. A natural femininity.

"I'm finished," she mumbled, then noticed his state. "You look like shit. Maybe you should get some rest."

Monroe peered up at her, only weary due to the storm – she was sure. Strangely, he resembled a person who was mourning, with that half-dead afterglow of someone who had to be in touch with the other side. Moonlight was not flattering on him; it brought out his age, his tendency to howl during an eclipse. The spirit of lightning, which made both of them flinch in alarm, was worse. He wiped the back of his palm on his cheek, like blood or grease on an old pair of jeans. "I don't know if I can do that, Charlotte, and wake up alive." His gaze flickered to the soil.

"Oh!" Charlie flushed, catching the implication. "No, uh. You don't have to worry about me killing you tonight. That would not be a fair way to take you out."

Curled on his side, parallel to her, Bass dreamt about how Charlie chewed on her mouth and tongue when caught off guard. Through the course of his nightmare, blood had devastated her appearance, sieving from a split lip and contaminating the rest of her pearly skin. He had done that to her – produced those nerves, broken her into self-destruction.

Monsters were in fairy tales, what cowered under your bed at night to seize you while oblivious. Little sound could be drained from them; they arrived in stealth, eager to produce fright. Charlie was not correct when she called him a monster. His terror was never quiet, never subtle; tearing families into shreds, recruiting men and women who lusted over ruptured arteries, shattering spines with iron, and brutalizing people until they just _gave up_…that was not him being a monster. Having control had transformed his hand into a windmill of carnage, slicing through hearts like it was his responsibility. There is not a word for that – no word bad enough. Not one he knew.

He began to fantasize. Charlie could become a monster – scary, stalking through the dark, wakening him with a gash to the neck. She should. Rationalized, everyone left him; he should leave, too, for good. She could help.

She would make a gorgeous monster, even as the sort of beast Disney used to draw. Pre-Blackout brutes. Chartreuse, plush, square-eyed.

The snap of a twig penetrated Bass' rest, and, hypervigilant, he bolted from his dream. A foggy silhouette, the contour of a young lady, was running off into the distance. Bass had not been asleep for long, the sky revealed; it was just as black as when he lied down, the moon was strung in an identical position, The Big Dipper nodding at passersby.

How reckless of her, to flee unarmed and in such a clamor. Practically the entire horizon of grass, although unkempt, trembled in her wake. Anyone would have noticed and may have already begun shadowing Charlie. Nevertheless, he debated with two opposing halves of his mind; she would be happier on her own, contesting her own battles. Bass raised up anyway, not bothering to limber his sore muscles first. He knew he could not betray her now – which meant not allowing her to encounter swords with naked knuckles and cracked elbows. More than a single enemy and he would discover her dumped in a ditch months later, wildflowers molesting her carcass. And he just could not let that happen.

"Charlotte," he called, voice groggy as his consciousness.

Persistent, she refused to look back, pumping her limbs harder. From several feet back, Bass overheard her wheezes and moans; an indication that her body was not yet ready for a sprint. "Dammit, Charlotte, stop," he pleaded. "You are going to get yourself killed. I will take you anywhere you want to go, just stop. You need to take it easy, you have just been through a lot. You don't have any weapons. You need water, and food, and…"

She was not listening. He saved his breath, and just upon touching her heels, Charlie went sliding through a pool of sludge – mud, grass, the remnants of animal bones. She mumbled some expletives, then gurgled, hoping to purge her throat of phlegm and gore.

Monroe offered his hand, which she accepted wordlessly. To anyone else, he would have joked about having to take another bath, or that she stunk. It was enough for her to tolerate his assistance, though, the two trudging through a harsh, flooded patch of woods without speaking. Even back at camp, Charlie appeared to have forgotten language; she swayed, arms crooked over his shoulder as he dispensed water into her mouth. She drank until the congestion faded and the fire melted her shuddering. They reposed, the moon metamorphosing into sun – a newborn blue sky diseased by peach cloudlets.

This peace helped Bass count her breaths as he did the day before. Each inhale birthed a rhythm – one two three four – and each exhale slew it – one two three four five one two three four. As long as Charlie saved her lips nearby, and air bled through onto his earlobe, he could believe that everything might be okay.

Come daybreak, he lifted her into the horse drawn carriage, and they sought Willoughby.


End file.
